Where there's a will.....
I couldn’t resist the corny, I know, headline for this blog, which concerns a very particular, and unusually charitable, way to address this most important, but too often unaddressed, bit of life admin.
So let me start by asking three questions. The first is: do you have a will? The second is: if so, how long ago did you make it? And the third is: are you sure it still reflects your wishes (and the current state of your estate)?
Maybe you’re one of the three in five UK adults who have not written a will. Or maybe you’re one of the 47% of people who haven’t updated their will in the last five years so that some, if not much, of its provision isn’t exactly what you’d still want to do with your estate.
If any of the above apply to you, I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that I would strongly urge you to do something about it. Not just because that will mean when you die your money, property and other assets will be left to the people you want them to be, but also because there’s a particular scheme that means you can write or update your will and donate money to worthy causes at the same time.
It’s called Will Aid and it’s a partnership between the legal profession and nine of the UK’s leading charities, including the NSPCC, the Red Cross, Save the Children and Age UK. Every November the solicitors participating in the scheme waive their fees for writing a basic will and ask clients to make a donation to Will Aid instead. The suggested donation for a single basic will is £100, with £180 the suggested amount to donate for a pair of basic, what they call mirror, wills (where a couple have the same instructions depending which one of them dies first).
Isn’t that a great idea? Will Aid has apparently been running since 1988 - since when the legal profession has raised over £21 million for charity and helped more than 310,000 people to make their wills - but I have to admit, this is the first time I’ve heard of it, I don’t know about you.
Of course you could make a will for less - there are standard forms that you can fill in on-line for free. But if you want the reassurance of having it properly and professionally drawn up it can cost up to a couple of thousand of pounds, depending how complicated it is (to be clear, the Will Aid offer only applies to straightforward wills, if there is anything more complex to deal with, the solicitor will discuss any extra costs with you).
You can find out all the details and information you need on the WILL AID WEBSITE so I won’t go into it any more here, other than to say unsurprisingly, the appointments, which are made available from September, get booked up very quickly, so if you think you might be interested, you should get in touch with them as soon as possible. You can use their ON-LINE SOLICITOR SEARCH or call them on 0300 0300 013 to find your nearest participating solicitors. But if you miss the boat this year, it’s an annual event, so you can always register for 2024.
And whilst I’m on the subject of life-min (as my daughters call it), and because something my mother, who was a lawyer for over 50 years, is obsessively adamant about everyone doing, please do consider appointing lasting powers of attorney for your finances and medical care, so that if you lose the mental capacity to make decisions and choices for yourself, or decide you no longer want to, you know that those decisions are being made by someone you trust.
I’ll report on my Will Aid experience after my appointment in November, so look out for that in the These Are The Heydays newsletter which you can find HERE, and which, if haven’t already, you can subscribe to and get a weekly helping of fun, great ideas and tips, inspiration and information.
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